Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

What’s On Thursday

9 P.M. (HBO) IN VOGUE: THE EDITOR’S EYE (2012) In honor of its 120th anniversary, Vogue magazine pays tribute to some of its most talked-about fashion layouts and the editors who created them — Grace Coddington, Tonne Goodman, Polly Allen Mellen, Camilla Nickerson, Phyllis Posnick and Babs Simpson — all women, whom Anna Wintour, the editor in chief, calls “our secret weapon.” This documentary, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato and coinciding with the publication of “Vogue: The Editor’s Eye,” also features interviews with women who have graced the magazine’s cover and pages, like Nicole Kidman and Sarah Jessica Parker, and with the designers Alber Elbaz, Nicolas Ghesquière, Marc Jacobs and Vera Wang, herself a former Vogue fashion editor. (Above, a model wearing Christian Dior Haute Couleur Lipstick in Dazzling Orange.)

2:25 P.M. (HBO2) FIELD OF DREAMS (1989) Kevin Costner plays Ray Kinsella, a farmer who builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield, where some ghostly men in old-time uniforms show up to play. One is Shoeless Joe Jackson, the greatest player on the Chicago White Sox team that threw the 1919 World Series. “The short route that has led to this point in ‘Field of Dreams’ goes to the heart of a work so smartly written, so beautifully filmed, so perfectly acted, that it does the almost impossible trick of turning sentimentality into true emotion,” Caryn James wrote in The New York Times. Ray Liotta makes Shoeless Joe “ethereal and real at once, a relic of an earlier age much more than a ghost from the past,” she said.

3:15 P.M. (MoreMax) JANE EYRE (2011) Mia Wasikowska (below), portrays Charlotte Brontë’s beleaguered governess, in flight from her employer and soul mate, Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender), in this adaptation of the novel, set at Thorndike Hall on the misty moors of England. Jamie Bell is St. John Rivers, the clergyman who helps to nurse Jane back to health; Judi Dench, the gossipy housekeeper; Sally Hawkins, the nasty aunt; and Imogen Poots, the rich girl who almost derails Jane’s chances in love. “This ‘Jane Eyre,’ energetically directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (‘Sin Nombre’) from a smart, trim script by Moira Buffini (‘Tamara Drewe’), is a splendid example of how to tackle the daunting duty of turning a beloved work of classic literature into a movie,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times. “Neither a radical updating nor a stiff exercise in middlebrow cultural respectability, Mr. Fukunaga’s film tells its venerable tale with lively vigor and an astute sense of emotional detail.”

4 P.M. (Sundance) VOLVER (2006) Three generations of Spanish women cope with life in this movie from Pedro Almodóvar, influenced by telenovelas and Hollywood weepies. Penélope Cruz (below), in an Oscar-nominated role, portrays Raimunda, a hardworking mother pulled in all directions by terrible events. Among those she consoles are her teenage daughter (Yohana Cobo); a sister who tries to mask loneliness behind good cheer; an aunt; and her neighbor (Blanca Portillo). Carmen Maura is her mother, who seems to have returned from the dead. “To relate the details of the narrative — death, cancer, betrayal, parental abandonment, more death — would create an impression of dreariness and woe,” A. O. Scott wrote in The Times. “But nothing could be further from the spirit of ‘Volver,’ which is buoyant without being flip, and consoling without ever becoming maudlin. Mr. Almodóvar acknowledges misfortune — and takes it seriously — from a perspective that is essentially comic. Very few filmmakers have managed to smile so convincingly in the face of misery and fatality.”

8 P.M. (NBC) 30 ROCK Jenna (Jane Krakowski) turns Bridezilla and grows furious with the newly married Liz (Tina Fey) for stealing her wedding limelight. In “Up All Night,” at 8:30, Reagan (Christina Applegate) secretly hangs out with her former sister-in-law (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), while Ava (Maya Rudolph) takes a fan and her family on a Hollywood tour. In “The Office,” at 9, Dwight (Rainn Wilson) treats co-workers to a traditional Schrute German Christmas after the party-planning committee drops the ball. And in “Parks and Recreation,” at 9:30, Ron (Nick Offerman), Diane (Lucy Lawless) and Leslie (Amy Poehler) attend a woodworking award ceremony, where Tammy II (Megan Mullally) shows up. KATHRYN SHATTUCK